The nuns of Sant Clara were thrown into extreme panic by the announcement of an unexpected visit from the cardinal. The messenger said he was already on the road and would be with them by nightfall. Armed with dusters and beeswax, the sisterhood attacked the fabric of the building, rubbing woodwork into fragrant gloss, washing floors, burnishing the silver on the chapel altar, emptying vases and cutting fresh flowers from the gardens, crushing lavender between muslins to hang in the guest-house, hoeing the weeds mercilessly in the garden in the cloister courtyard, dragging the plough and harrow into a tidy corner of the farm – one task no sooner accomplished than someone thought of another. One would have thought it probable that the cardinal in Ciudad had heard rumours of slack housekeeping at Sant Clara, and had come looking for a mote of dust to reproach them with. If he came looking for uncleanness, however, as the abbess well knew, it would be of a less literal sort. She summoned Sor Agnete to her office after the Angelus, and closed the door.
‘Tell me I am right, Sister. We could not have given scandal of any kind? None of the sisterhood has committed a crime?’
‘Likely to have reached the ears of the cardinal?’ said Sor Agnete. ‘Certainly not, Mother. By the grace of God this is an orderly and a peaceful house. The worst a sister might have done is fall asleep during late office, or forget to milk a goat.’
‘We are all well known to each other,’ Sor Agnete added, ‘except the new novice. And she is harmless.’
‘Yes, yes. Then it is not scandal that brings him.’
‘What put such a thing into your head?’ said Sor Agnete. ‘He is in need of a little peace and quiet, and some of Sor Coloma’s pasque-bread, more likely!’
Josefa, meanwhile, was working hard, and in a daze, for the crisis had engulfed the place when she had barely learned her way around it. She had swept the yard, washed the flagstones of the kitchen floor with milk – an instruction she had accepted with astonishment, till she saw with pleasure the sheen the milk gave to the stones as they dried – helped with weeding for some hours, and then climbed down the steep path to the shore to gather a basket of mussels for the cardinal’s supper. The sun beat remorselessly on the path as she climbed back with her heavy basket, striking off the rocks on either side, getting under the brim of her hat. Her novice’s habit, of heavy dark broadcloth, was suffocatingly hot, and when she regained the kitchen and put her burden on the kitchen table, she was flushed scarlet and sweating freely. Sor Coloma, the cook, looked up and saw.
‘My poor child, sit down at once, and let me bring you a sup of water,’ she said. Josefa sat down gratefully on a stool. The glass of water Sor Coloma set in front of her was cloudy – a fresh lemon had been squeezed into it.
‘We are working you as hard as ever that stepmother of yours worked you, without a doubt,’ said Sor Coloma, chopping onions on a board and weeping freely.
‘Oh, but it’s different, Sister!’ said Josefa at once.
‘How is that?’
‘I don’t mind working where everyone works.’
‘Do you think you will like it here?’ Sor Coloma asked her.
‘Yes. Everyone is kind to me here. It is like having my mother back, many times over.’
‘Ah, well, it’s just as well,’ the sister said. ‘You live your life out here, either way, and it’s hard on us all when someone hates it. Can you open mussels?’
But just then Sor Agnete appeared in the kitchen. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said to Josefa. ‘Now, I’ve a job for you. You are to go to the top of the orange orchard, and sit under the tree. You can find a shaded spot. Take your prayer book with you; no need to be idle. From there you can see the road coming down to us. When you see someone coming, come back here in haste, and tell me.’
Off went Josefa, to spend the next hour deliciously, sitting on the damp grass in the shade of the orange tree, crushing leaves between her fingers for the oily fragrance, and looking at the soaring mountains above her and the pretty little cupola of her new home below her, against the hazy dazzle of the sea. She tried hard not to fall asleep, and almost succeeded. The clatter of horses’ hooves on the stony path and the drift of voices woke her; so that the first sight of Sant Clara afforded to Severo and Rafal and their servants included a glimpse of an ungainly nun, her habit hoisted almost to her knees, running pell-mell through the orange grove and across the farmyard.
‘We are announced, I think,’ said Severo, laughing. ‘I did not know a nun could run – If I had thought about it, I would have supposed their vows had hobbled them!’
Under the archway of the abbey gate, the abbess waited for them. She stood erect, with the aid of her sticks. Coming from the blazing sunlight of the road, Severo did not at first see her standing black-garbed in the shadows. He reined in his horse and dismounted to find her standing at his side.
‘If I kneel to you, Holiness, I shall never get up,’ she said. ‘Welcome.’
‘We can dispense with bodily ceremony,’ he said. ‘My blessing upon this holy house.’
She glanced at his companion; at the two servants and the horses. A very large basket was slung between two mares. She clapped her hands, and lay sisters came to help unburden the horses and lead them to the stables. ‘Put the basket in the shade, and do not open it,’ said Severo, going gratefully to the room in the guest-house that had been made ready for him with such agitation.
Later, washed and rested, he walked in the garden, overlooking the sea, and wondered exactly how to explain the trial to the abbess. There was not much time; the child would need food and water, the basket would have to be opened at dusk.
It was possible for Severo, of course, simply to command the abbess. She owed him an absolute obedience on which he could rely. But so to command someone older than himself, older in the service of God, and in a matter of such delicacy, was not his way. The thing seemed to require both tact and gentleness.
Since the woman could no longer stand or walk without pain, Severo summoned her to the garden of the guest-house, and commanded her to sit on the bench provided for him. He told her that he had come to lay an arduous task upon her and her nuns, and that the task involved teaching a most difficult and pitiful child. He told her everything he knew about the child, and she listened in silence.
Then she said, ‘Permit me to say, Holiness, that the teaching of children in solitude is not the best way. In playing with other children, every child is happiest. The company of other children is the best teacher of such simple things as walking and talking. Most humbly I suggest, Holiness, that the foundling hospital at Santanya would serve better.’
‘I have three reasons for not accepting that advice,’ said Severo. ‘First I am concerned to protect the child from the curiosity of the people. It is not fitting that she should be a subject of vulgar gawping. Santanya is too much visited. Nothing discreet could go forward there for long. The seclusion here . . .’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Then, the savagery she learned from the wolf, her foster-mother, would make her very dangerous to other children. She can inflict deep wounds – she has done so. To lay such risks on those who have devoted themselves to lives of self-sacrifice is one thing; to ask it of abandoned orphans with none to speak for them . . .’
‘We will accept the risk,’ she said, serenely, ‘and offer our wounds to our Lord Jesus in mitigation of the sins of the world.’
‘My last reason is the overriding one. You must prepare yourself to find it harsh. I want to be sure – absolutely – that those who have taught the child will have done so without ever mentioning to her, in any way, the fact of God. I shall require an oath from everyone in your community that they will never reveal their knowledge to the child, but keep it from her wholly and entirely secret. This I could not ask of half the population of Santanya. I need the dedication and self-discipline to be found here, at Sant Clara.’
The abbess was silent for a long while. Then she said, ‘Holiness, may I ask you why you require such a thing?’
‘I want to discover from the child whether the knowledge of God is innate.’
Again she was silent. ‘I should seek the answer to such a question, if I needed it, in the teaching of the Church, Holiness,’ she said at last.
‘The teaching is uncertain. We know that the knowledge of God can be attained by reason. We know that it is found in revelation. But we cannot find clearly stated whether it is given to every soul, even to those without revelation and those who have not undertaken the attempt to reason it out.’ She made no answer.
‘Clearly, children usually learn of God as they learn of many things, from their parents and teachers, the people all around them. But if the wolf-child, when she can be questioned, knows God, it cannot be from such sources. Provided your community can do as I ask, it will be proof absolute of innate knowledge.’ To himself he added, ‘And if she does not it will prove that there is no such thing.’
‘You will be obeyed, Holiness,’ she said. Such resignation in her tone!
‘You dislike the command?’ he asked. ‘Why? Because it is hard?’
‘Because it is unkind,’ she said.
He blinked. It was more than twenty years since anyone had rebuked him, and he was rocked by a little spiralling impulse of rage, of which he was instantly ashamed.
‘It is not my idle curiosity I seek to satisfy,’ he said, mastering himself. ‘Souls perhaps, a life certainly, depend on it.’
‘Have I not said you will be obeyed, Holiness?’ she said in a tone of mild amazement.
He went on, ‘The sufferings of the child must have a meaning in the providence of God. It seems to us possible that God’s purpose in her is to offer us a proof of what otherwise cannot be known. If so, it is God’s work I ask of you.’
She turned to him a visage clearly minted with an expression of benign puzzlement. She was at an age at which the soul’s character is deeply stamped on to the face. Her eyes were cloudy, full of a soft suspended mist, and he realized with relief that she would see only veiled the horror he had brought her.
‘It is enough that you ask it, Holiness, in order for it to be God’s work for us,’ she said. ‘Where is the child now?’
‘In a basket, in your gatehouse,’ he said.
‘Holy Mother of Mercy!’ she said, struggling to her feet. ‘All this time . . .’
Severo braced himself for what was to come.
First his servants carried the basket – stinking now – to the hermitage. The hermitage was a squat square tower of two storeys, occupying the last level corner of the little valley of Sant Clara, atop the cliff-face descent to the shore. It was older by far than the nunnery, having been a watch-tower once, or perhaps a beacon tower. Because it stood alone it was used as a penitentiary – the upper room contained a bed of wooden boards and a crucifix, and nothing else. The lower room was a byre and lambing shed, with an earth floor covered in straw. Here the basket was opened. The creature scuttled out at once, and with a loping seesaw gait made for the darkest corner, and crouched there, back turned to the abbess and Severo, and Rafal, who had opened the basket.
‘That is a girl?’ said the abbess softly. ‘I cannot see clearly . . .’
‘Amara!’ called Severo. The creature covered its ears, wrapping its arms round its lowered head. Severo gestured to Rafal, who approached her where she crouched. She ran away, and her legs gave under her, so that she collapsed in the straw. Rafal went outside to the well and brought a pan of water. ‘She needs food at once,’ he said. ‘Raw meat. She only eats raw meat.’
Even the noisy lapping of the child at the water dish did not cover the sound of dismay that the abbess uttered. ‘Holiness, have you forgotten that we keep perpetual Lent here?’
He had.
‘We do not eat meat,’ she reminded him, ‘and we have all vowed solemnly never to touch it. How can the child be fed?’
‘We must think of something,’ said Severo, distraught. He was tired and hungry himself, and battling with irritation at the gritty difficulties of the day. All very well for Beneditx to suggest experiments – he didn’t have to arrange them. Severo’s angel, however, was dutiful that evening. The immediate problem was solved by Rafal, without permission asked or given; he simply stole a hen from the farmyard, thrust it into the lambing shed where Amara was locked for the night, and closed the door on both creatures.
Meanwhile, Severo sat enthroned in the vaulted chapter house, facing the rows of nuns and novices. Twelve women, young and old, and four girls at the back in the postulants’ bench. He told them the story of the child; he laid the task on them; he forbade them to mention God to the child, and he told them why he forbade it. He made them one by one approach him, and swear on the abbey’s great and ancient Testament that they would do as he commanded. Then he raised the question of preparing meat. He offered to absolve one of the sisterhood from sin in breaking her vow . . .
Blushing scarlet, and shaking in her shoes at her temerity in rising to her feet and speaking to a cardinal, Josefa stood and told him that she had not yet taken any vow and was free to do any service, however menial and despised. Severo, thanking God for her, swore her into her novitiate on the spot, editing the Sant Clara vow to permit her to feed the snow-child for as long as necessary. The abbess, fumbling, half-sighted, fixed her novice’s wimple of coarse linen, and the cardinal himself put the bridal ring on her finger. It was to Christ that he wedded her, but it seemed to Josefa that it was to the snow-child.
When he rode away at daybreak, into the dark shade of the mountains cast by the morning sun, the ugly and passionate face of the new novice stayed in his mind for the first several miles. Where had she come from, he wondered, so – a propos? But then, after all, he did not believe in accidents.